Listen now, my hatchlings. When peace was made between dragons and elves at the end of our war, the Riders were created to ensure that such conflict would never again arise between our two races. Queen Tarmunora of the elves and the dragon who had been selected to represent us, whose name—he paused and conveyed a series of impressions to Eragon: long tooth, white tooth, chipped tooth; fights won, fights lost; countless eaten Shrrg and Nagra; seven-and-twenty eggs sired and nineteen offspring grown to maturity—cannot be expressed in any language, decided that a common treaty would not suffice. Signed paper means nothing to a dragon. Our blood runs hot and thick and, given enough time, it was inevitable that we would clash with the elves again, as we had with the dwarves over the millennia. But unlike with the dwarves, neither we nor the elves could afford another war. We were both too powerful, and we would have destroyed each other. The one way to prevent that and to forge a meaningful accord was to link our two races with magic.

Eragon shivered, and with a touch of amusement, Glaedr said,Saphira, if you are wise, you will heat one of these rocks with the fire from your belly so that your Rider does not freeze.

Thereupon Saphira arched her neck, and a jet of blue flame emanated from between her serrated fangs and splashed against the scree, blackening the lichen, which released a bitter smell as it burned. The air grew so hot that Eragon was forced to turn away. He felt the insects underneath the rocks being crisped in the inferno. After a minute, Saphira clapped shut her jaws, leaving a circle of stones five feet across glowing cherry red.

Thank you,Eragon said to her. He hunched by the edge of the scorched rocks and warmed his hands over them.

Remember, Saphira, to use your tongue to direct the stream,admonished Glaedr.Now . . . it took nine years for the elves’ wisest magicians to devise the needed spell. When they had, they and the dragons gathered together at Ilirea. The elves provided the structure of the enchantment, the dragons provided the strength, and together they melded the souls of elves and dragons.

The joining changed us. We dragons gained the use of language and other trappings of civilization, while the elves shared in our longevity, since before that moment, their lives were as short as humans’. In the end, the elves were the most affected. Our magic, dragons’ magic—which permeates every fiber of our being—was transmitted to the elves and, in time, gave them their much-vaunted strength and grace. Humans have never been influenced as strongly, since you were added to the spell after its completion and it has not had as much time to work upon you as with the elves. Still—and here Glaedr’s eye gleamed—it has already gentled your race from the rough barbarians who first landed in Alagaësia, though you have begun to regress since the Fall.

“Were dwarves ever part of this spell?” asked Eragon.

No, and that is why there has never been a dwarf Rider. They do not care for dragons, nor we for them, and they found the idea of being joined with us repellent. Perhaps it is fortunate that they did not enter into our pact, for they have escaped the decline of humans and elves.

Decline, Master?queried Saphira in what Eragon would have sworn was a teasing tone of voice.

Aye, decline. If one or another of our three races suffer, so do they all. By killing dragons, Galbatorix harmed his own race as well as the elves. The two of you have not seen this, for you are new to Ellesméra, but the elves are on the wane; their power is not what it once was. And humans have lost much of their culture and been consumed by chaos and corruption. Only by righting the imbalance between our three races shall order return to the world.

The old dragon kneaded the scree with his talons, crumbling it into gravel so that he was more comfortable.Layered within the enchantment Queen Tarmunora oversaw was the mechanism that allows a hatchling to be linked with his or her Rider. When a dragon decides to give an egg to the Riders, certain words are said over the egg—which I shall teach you later—that prevent the dragon inside from hatching until it is brought into contact with the person with whom it decides to bond. As dragons can remain in their eggs indefinitely, time is of no concern, nor is the infant harmed. You yourself are an example of this, Saphira.

The bond that forms between a Rider and dragon is but an enhanced version of the bond that already exists between our races. The human or elf becomes stronger and fairer, while some of the dragon’s fiercer traits are tempered by a more reasoned outlook. . . . I see a thought biting at your tongue, Eragon. What is it?

“It’s just . . .” He hesitated. “I have a hard time imagining you or Saphira being any fiercer. Not,” he added anxiously, “that that’s a bad thing.”

The ground shook as if with an avalanche as Glaedr chuckled, rolling his great big staring eye behind its horny lid and back again.If ever you met an unbonded dragon, you would not say so. A dragon alone answers to no one and no thing, takes whatever pleases it, and bears no thought of kindness for aught but its kith and kin. Fierce and proud were the wild dragons, even arrogant. . . . The females were so formidable, it was accounted a great accomplishment among the Riders’ dragons to mate with one.

The lack of this bond is why Galbatorix’s partnership with Shruikan, his second dragon, is such a perverted union. Shruikan did not choose Galbatorix as his partner; he was twisted by certain black magics into serving Galbatorix’s madness. Galbatorix has constructed a depraved imitation of the relationship that you, Eragon, and you, Saphira, possess and that he lost when the Urgals murdered his original dragon.

Glaedr paused and looked between the two of them. His eye was all that moved.That which links you exceeds any simple connection between minds. Your very souls, your identities—call it what you will—have been welded on a primal level. His eye flicked to Eragon.Do you believe that a person’s soul is separate from his body?